Dungeon experiences

So I played a chunk of Ascalonian Catacombs story mode last night on my 33 ranger, and it has me a little worried whether I picked the right class. We went in with 3 rangers, a thief and a guardian, one 80, one 50-ish and three at the right level, two first-timers, and barring a few minor mishaps we did ok up to the Lovers, Ralena and Vassar.

In that fight I seemed to spend more time dodging and trying to stay alive than anything else. We tried to take down Ralena first, but she just kept nailing me with lightning, these phantom adds which take half your life at a bite, and AoE. I think I died about half a dozen times, the patch came in and we abandoned.

Looking back at it now, really the only way I could have done better was with more situational awareness, better twitch reflexes, and maybe exploiting LoS more, which I hardly did at all. So I'm left wondering what I should be doing to improve, developing twitch skills, trying to play smarter or maybe even going for a more durable class like a Guardian on my alt (I just started an elementalist). Are twitch reflexes really an essential part of dungeon play?

Guild Wars 2 is an action game MMO. Its essentially what used to be a called an "arcade" game, meaning a greater emphasis is placed on reaction rather than strategic or cerebral skill. Constant kiting, dodging and timely cooldown management are at the core of the game.

Looking back at it now, really the only way I could have done better was with more situational awareness, better twitch reflexes, and maybe exploiting LoS more, which I hardly did at all. So I'm left wondering what I should be doing to improve, developing twitch skills, trying to play smarter or maybe even going for a more durable class like a Guardian on my alt (I just started an elementalist). Are twitch reflexes really an essential part of dungeon play?

You develop those with time. Playing with party is a bit different than playing alone. Here are some techniques for dungeons:

Firstly, synergy isn't too important. You can run with three thieves and as long as they all know what to do, they won't die horribly and your target will die rapidly. No *footing around with that setup.

The main key to smooth dungeons, anyway, has five steps:

1. Focus. Team synergy doesn't really exist in GW2, but the more enemies there are, the more chance they'll down one of you. You want to have a designated caller to call targets and have everyone smash it. Professions with heavy single-target damage suddenly become relevant when you understand individual foes need to die faster than a whole mob. Don't feel like you're bossing the team on what to attack; it benefits every profession. Focusing conditions onto one target will then make a necromancer's Epidemic even stronger. With Binding Chains, a guardian can gather everything together and you can enjoy spiking out single-targets while everything else also gets hit by unfocused AoE from greatswords, elemental spells, bombs and clusterbobombs. The outcome is everything dies faster.

2. Dodge, dodge, dodge, dodge. It would be best if everyone knew what the dungeon held in store for them before entering, but that's not always the case. However, you *know* that this game is all about evading attacks to stay alive. Toughness and Vitality do little more than make it more likely for enemies to aggro you; if you get hit, you're still likely to go down. Dodging is key, and once you're out of dodge meter, you best make sure they're not going to attack you. Kholer in AC is a good example; you should always save one bar of endurance for his golf-swing animation, which is when you dodge to evade instant misfortune. Look for the tells in the animations and it's easy. Once the whole team understands this, you can run full glass-cannon setups and it doesn't feel any different to 3 guard, 2 war teams, etc. Take who's available. (albeit necs op)

3. Reviving team mates. You should never forget that killing an enemy that you've tagged will get you back up. Saves your team sacrificing DPS from having to pick you up manually and you become less of a burden. This really goes with step 1 because having a focused target means it's less likely to die after downing. Keep attacking the target and hope the enemies aren't focusing on you. If you see an enemy with lower health, call it and hope your team switch. In contrast of this, it is imperative to waypoint as soon as you die while the team is still in battle.

4. Luring. Don't underestimate the importance of luring; especially bosses. Pulling single bosses can mean life and death, for example in TA pfwdfwd, hotw p3, SE p1, etc. Take those encounters slow and remember that prep doesn't take as long as respawning

5. Mobskips. Skipping content to avoid long or difficult encounters is performed in almost every party these days, to optimise runtime and therefore earn more from the chests over time. All professions bar, maybe, one can run past any mob reliably. The thief has the greatest mobility of all, with AoE stealth/regen, many shadowsteps and innate +25% IMS. Shadowstep is also a stun break, which are important for all classes attempting to run past a mob with knockdowns or snares.
a. Never waste your dodges because bored; use them when being fired at.
b. Use your IMS upon entering a mob, not to simply speed up your run (if it's a far distance).
c. Prepare to use your stun break or stability if anything goes tits up.
d. Travel as a team, ensuring everyone's safe-journey.

I play elementalist and for dungeons I have taken much more toughness&vitality than what I had before. I don't know how much other classes need this but ele is lowest hp and lowest armor class, so when boss decides to go after me I do not want to be full berserker geared one-hit-wonder. At level 80 Guardian, Thief and Elementalist have 10805 base HP. Second place goes to Engineer, Ranger and Mesmer who have 15082 base HP and finally there are Warrior and Necromancer have 18372 base HP.

I also focused to raw power instead of crits. My survivability has increased and I can maintain good steady damage. The power+toughness+vitality gear is easy to get from AC expl and you also get good amount of money while running that.

Guild Wars 2 is an action game MMO. Its essentially what used to be a called an "arcade" game, meaning a greater emphasis is placed on reaction rather than strategic or cerebral skill. Constant kiting, dodging and timely cooldown management are at the core of the game.

It's interesting that you should say that because the whole pve levelling curve does not play that way. It's traditional, cooldown and damage rotation mmo stuff, where manual twitch dodges are purely optional. Then they come in with dungeons and it seems to become a core part of dungeon play and the main focus for providing difficulty. As game design that sucks, because the levelling curve fails to provide you with the player skills you need...

But thank you both for the tips, I'm going to take a little time to get to grips with it and hopefully the next run will be more successful.

It's interesting that you should say that because the whole pve levelling curve does not play that way. It's traditional, cooldown and damage rotation mmo stuff, where manual twitch dodges are purely optional. Then they come in with dungeons and it seems to become a core part of dungeon play and the main focus for providing difficulty. As game design that sucks, because the levelling curve fails to provide you with the player skills you need...

But thank you both for the tips, I'm going to take a little time to get to grips with it and hopefully the next run will be more successful.

You are only level 33, so that may be the case, but later on in your leveling experience, manual twitch dodges become less and less optional.

Whatever you do, don't start stacking tough/vit all of a sudden just because you died a lot. The issue with going for tough/vit is that you don't learn how to play better, you remain on your "skill level" but you just can survive more. It's (in my opinion) better to stay as glassy as possible so dodging becomes critical.
There's a couple of things which make big differences:

Knowing what to look out for on a boss. (Kholer's sword being drawn and him "kneeling" to do a falcon punch, etc...)

Knowing your class. This seems obvious but it happens way to often that people don't bring weapons a long which they don't normally use but are really handy for certain parts (ele focus for example)

Knowing your team, there are loads of synergies which are overlooked by new players. For instance feedback(mes skill)+rapid fire(longbow ranger) or guard gs 5 +guard hammer 5.

Combo fields, these are a lot stronger than people seem to think. Being able to constantly keep 25might stacks up due to combo field fire is awesome.

Builds, if all rangers and the thief were condition damage specced you're losing great potential.

Don't dodge every attack, one shot mechanics are telegraphed like hell. Focus on those.

Watch your buffs and debuffs, aegis means you don't have to dodge (same goes for protection 99% of the time)

Experience, my first CoF run took me like 20min, now (with a good team) I'm doing it in 5minutes.

If you have a condi based player don't focus all trash mobs one after another and another. Let the conditions do the last % and start attacking something else.

Keep moving, there is no reason to stand still, and this helps you evade circles of death a lot easier. (and if you need to dodge projectiles quickly strafe left right left...)

So I've heard, but seeing as I haven't actually played one yet, I don't feel comfortable spouting out information based solely on hearsay.

It was my first level 80 character (have 4 at the moment) and it was by far the easiest. It was still fun to play but as long as you can manage your pet and know when to swap, there wasn't much movement needed with the class.

Also keep in mind AC story mode is an awful dungeon (especially the fight with the lovers) so it can be quite a culture shock for the first time player.
I know I hated it and quit the game for like 2 days after doing it the first time... but then you do other dungeons, exp modes etc and it gets better.

Also keep in mind AC story mode is an awful dungeon (especially the fight with the lovers) so it can be quite a culture shock for the first time player.
I know I hated it and quit the game for like 2 days after doing it the first time... but then you do other dungeons, exp modes etc and it gets better.

I wouldn't consider it so much a retard check as a pretty complex fight which stacks 4 tough mechanics. Basically you have two characters who increase in power as they come closer to eachother and so have to be kept apart, one of whom is ranged and casts slow travelling lightning balls that need to be evaded, also casts a short-duration hard hitting AoE that you have to get out of the way of, and one of the two spawns hard-to-see ghostly adds which hit hard. It's not a fight with phases as you might see in wow.

If you're an organised guild group where people have read up on the fight and picked a good strat, it's probably ok. For pugs or spur-of-the-moment runs with more than one newbie and no-one explaining, it's not a good fight. Not so easy to work out on the fly.

it's not that hard if you've figured out that you should use the environment (early hints were the stones on the panels to open the door). There is a room to the boss-room where you can trap one of the lovers in order to keep them seperated. You just have to lure one of them into the room. Our group stays in this room and once the door is closed behind one lover, we kill him.

You just have to use your brain and assemble what you've learned in that dungeon. To keep the other one from following into the room, just throw a rock at him/her to knock her down. Something that could be done in the bossfight against Master Ranger Nente before or other trash-mobs.

I wouldn't consider it so much a retard check as a pretty complex fight which stacks 4 tough mechanics. Basically you have two characters who increase in power as they come closer to eachother and so have to be kept apart, one of whom is ranged and casts slow travelling lightning balls that need to be evaded, also casts a short-duration hard hitting AoE that you have to get out of the way of, and one of the two spawns hard-to-see ghostly adds which hit hard. It's not a fight with phases as you might see in wow.

If you're an organised guild group where people have read up on the fight and picked a good strat, it's probably ok. For pugs or spur-of-the-moment runs with more than one newbie and no-one explaining, it's not a good fight. Not so easy to work out on the fly.

Actually it is phased, if you kill one lover without killing the other within 5 seconds they get super buffed in both damage and attack speed and will start destroying everyone to avenge their fallen lover.

I think all the bosses in AC story but King Adleburn are really fun and good fights.

@OP: don't go into defensive stats unless you plan on taking more hits for your group, otherwise those stats are going to be wasted. Once you get your dodging down you'll have less issues with dying, the game is VERY twitch oriented. It's kinda like a hack and slash games, mobs have quite a bit of health, hit really hard, and you will die really fast if you don't notice one of the big attacks.

Originally Posted by draykorinee

Youre in the mmo forums and you find mmos boring, Im heading on over to the twilight forums to add my unecessary and shallow 2 cents.

Once you get level up and get gear, you will be doing double the damage and have double the survivability you have now. All professions have plenty of viable builds (from super tanky to glass cannon) to do everything in the game, except maybe 40+ fractals.

Just stick with the class you like the most.

Of course if you are a perfectionist some professions definitely do certain things much better than others, but it is still not a huge deal or gap.

Once you get level up and get gear, you will be doing double the damage and have double the survivability you have now. All professions have plenty of viable builds (from super tanky to glass cannon) to do everything in the game, except maybe 40+ fractals.

Just stick with the class you like the most.

Of course if you are a perfectionist some professions definitely do certain things much better than others, but it is still not a huge deal or gap.

40+ fractals require specific things because we can't get enough ascended gear yet to deal with it otherwise(so I'm told).

And the only thing I'd even say Is there certainly are aspects some profs flat out can't do . iE rangers can't do anti boons, yet at the same time warriors can't be in multiple places at once (unlike rangers(pets), engis(turrets), necro (minions), guardians (spirit weps), etc).

Originally Posted by draykorinee

Youre in the mmo forums and you find mmos boring, Im heading on over to the twilight forums to add my unecessary and shallow 2 cents.

It's not a waste, it's useful, unless you're in the depths of hell known as fractals +40 in which case it's entirely useless and if you're wearing it in there you're a fucking dumb ass and the fact you got that far to begin with is a fucking miracle.

PRE-Everything one shots you regardless of what you do, it's actually a good stat for the whole distraction techniques and all that stuff, however post that area, it becomes absolutely useless and it becomes more of a kill or be killed sort of thing. Not to mention you should rephrase that to say high lv PVE players think it's useless, because it sure as hell is useful in WvW and s/tPvP.

Fun fact, there is apparently a ranger in lv 64 fractals... which is kinda amazing when you think about it seeing as how everyone i've met is pretty hell bent on telling me rangers are bad and are the worst prof in the game (they aren't, those people are just stupid).

PS: Mel, scrow down a little bit, someone says as long as you have 3k+ armor it actually helps pretty immensely, however the threat that this "guide" thing is posted on is for a glass cannon mesmer build so yeah, vit/toughness are just fucking stupid because they aren't something that build should be using, but a tanky build (IE tank guardian) would still want to go heavy toughness and would still be useful through the 30's.

Last edited by Durzlla; 2013-01-13 at 06:36 PM.

Originally Posted by draykorinee

Youre in the mmo forums and you find mmos boring, Im heading on over to the twilight forums to add my unecessary and shallow 2 cents.